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It would really help if we knew what the Devs’ expectations are concerning this revamp:

Is their aim to have 4 equally good tanks (guardians, warden, captains, champions), 4 healers (minstels, RKs, captains, LMs), 3 CCs (Burglars, LMs, hunters) and everyone good at dps when their other roles have already been filled in a fellowship or raid?

Can this realistically be done, or will we have an environment similar to what we have now?

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you change your skill tree load out, similar to what we do at the bard now? So it's not really limiting you to picking just a single way to play, it's just limiting you from doing everything all at once. If this is correct, this is a very good change. It'll help everyone to become better at their classes, currently there's just way too many skills and stuff to think about at the same time. I know most people who come back from a break and they make new characters rather than try to relearn their existing characters, and for somebody like me who plays 3-4 alts at a time, it's just too much. Are existing traits as we know it going away? I hope so. It sounds like this could replace both the skill and trait system and merge them together.

It'll help everyone to become better at their classes, currently there's just way too many skills and stuff to think about at the same time. I know most people who come back from a break and they make new characters rather than try to relearn their existing characters, and for somebody like me who plays 3-4 alts at a time, it's just too much.

Do I now not worry my pretty little head about that? Shall I just go back to the kitchen?

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you change your skill tree load out, similar to what we do at the bard now? So it's not really limiting you to picking just a single way to play, it's just limiting you from doing everything all at once. If this is correct, this is a very good change. It'll help everyone to become better at their classes, currently there's just way too many skills and stuff to think about at the same time. I know most people who come back from a break and they make new characters rather than try to relearn their existing characters, and for somebody like me who plays 3-4 alts at a time, it's just too much. Are existing traits as we know it going away? I hope so. It sounds like this could replace both the skill and trait system and merge them together.

If you don't use certain skills because they are confusing or 'too hard to figure out' then slide them off your quickslots... why should I suffer?

Founding Member of the Vocal Minority....

"Well my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
Captain Malcolm Reynolds

It would really help if we knew what the Devs’ expectations are concerning this revamp:

Is their aim to have 4 equally good tanks (guardians, warden, captains, champions), 4 healers (minstels, RKs, captains, LMs), 3 CCs (Burglars, LMs, hunters) and everyone good at dps when their other roles have already been filled in a fellowship or raid?

Can this realistically be done, or will we have an environment similar to what we have now?

I don't think the idea is to make them equally good but at least viable in the role they are supposed to work if specced right. Doubt that will ever work out perfectly but i'm happy enough if they get it more even, so not one class can do everything at once while the other is exactly good at one thing and only one thing.

If you don't use certain skills because they are confusing or 'too hard to figure out' then slide them off your quickslots... why should I suffer?

Again, my personal opinion: You (and I) are no longer the targeted demographic. Turbine management want lots and lots of poor and mediocre players, for whom large skill sets are intimidating. The developers no longer have the ability or inclination to appeal to players of varied skill, certainly not the few exceptional ones. You will get vanilla and you will like it...or leave. Besides, many of the exceptional players will stay and buy the expansions just to see how the story plays out or role play or whatever. (I very probably fall into this category, even though I hate it.) Contrary to what the people on these boards often think, the managers at Turbine are not stupid. They are ruthless.

If you don't use certain skills because they are confusing or 'too hard to figure out' then slide them off your quickslots... why should I suffer?

This is not an RTS. If that's what you want, go play one of those games. The game has plenty of complexity in how you build out your character (and still will with the trees) and with a reasonable number of skills. Creeps have it about right. 4-5+ skill bars of active skills is too much. This will lead to much more enjoyable gameplay for 90% of the playerbase, and it will also help with more effective players in groups. If some of you grizzled vets who know everything about the game inside and out leave, so be it.

In short: They want to give new players choice to trait in all 3 ways from start of the game (atm some trait lines work only when you get moria legandaries and 5 traits from the line) and they want to make classes devoted to the role they selected, no more everyone can do everything at the same time (example: LM can heal, debuff, dps and cc.. not all roles they do perfectly but they can still do them, or Champion that can take 15k+ dmg in small period of time and be full morale with bubbles, dire need, bracing attack adamant.. dont think champions are made for healing)

Turbine is making the game easier for new players to transition from other MMO's. They are after the money and I understand that from a business perspective. HOWEVER it is a complete joke to think that from the start of the game any new player will be to effectively trait anything similar to what they will at the "end" of the trait tree. No you did not say that...but Turbine more or less IMPLIES that new players will be effectively traiting similarly. They will start out just the same as now...weak and as they progress get stronger (but shouldn't take them too long to make their way into 'Big Battles" at lvl 10). Yes it will be a new system that is much more familiar to their new target revenue stream (i mean new customer). New players won't be as critical or compare things to the "way it used to be" simply because they won't know how it was at XXX amount of time ago. I am not saying this new direction is wrong from Turbine's point of view but as a player for almost 3 years now I see a lot of potential for change for the worse and I'd be lying if I said that didn't concern me. Now with that said I have really liked many of the things that Turbine has done in the past and I will only be able to wait and see how badly the changes affect me as a player (and my army of alts--one of each class). Only time is going to tell if this was a big success for Turbine or a big failure and only time will tell how many long time players enjoy the changes or decide that it is time to move and donate their cash to another company.

I could rant and rave but a) I already did that to my friends and b) it's been done in the forums by enough players already. Instead, I'll attempt to state an opinion without running off at the mouth.

To me, regardless of the motivations behind the class changes, they just feel wrong. Anyone with a character they've invested a serious amount of time into is going to lose skills, be forced into a rebuild that may or may not work for them, and be faced with what I think of as "every other MMO's class skill setup."

So regardless of play style, we're all going to be seeing a game that has completely diminished one of the things that sets it apart. Oh, and that character you worked so hard on for so long? Basically, toss it out the window.

Sigh... I love this game for the lore. It's what attracted me to it in the first place. But I'm really skeptical that the pull of the lore will serve to bridge the gap created by what I can only consider an affront and intrusion into my LOTRO experience. I'll hold out final judgment til release but until then, my sub --and pre-order money-- are staying in my pocket.

.
"There is some good in this world, Mister Frodo, and I believe it's worth fighting for." Visit Echad Wound

They will start out just the same as now...weak and as they progress get stronger (but shouldn't take them too long to make their way into 'Big Battles" at lvl 10). Yes it will be a new system that is much more familiar to their new target revenue stream (i mean new customer). New players won't be as critical or compare things to the "way it used to be" simply because they won't know how it was at XXX amount of time ago.

That makes me wonder. How many beta testers will start a new alt from scratch to check the new system in the 1-85 level range instead of focusing in the new content. For all we know, some of the classes may be broken at mid level areas.

Turbine is making the game easier for new players to transition from other MMO's.

Maybe that will be one of the outcomes for it, but that's not the primary reason. The current system is quite broken and doesn't scale well. For the long term health of LOTRO it either needed to be rewritten or Turbine has to keep applying band-aids regularly. I'm glad they finally decided on the former. To be honest it was way overdue.

For me the success of the skill tree will depend on whether it's fun for me *and* whether it makes sense to me. The "makes sense" is important to me, and it's also why I'd like to see the legendary weapon system scrapped.

The skill tree system used in EVE-Online makes sense to me: you learn skills, which may be prerequisites for other skills. There are more skills than anyone can learn. Once you've learned a skill, you don't forget it unless you screw up badly in extremely avoidable ways. You make decisions about what you want to be from the very beginning, and you can become very good at a narrow but very useful range of skills in a short time, but you can't reallocate those skill points.

What wouldn't make sense to me is sitting down and assigning a bunch of points to give myself a totally different skill set, temporarily forgetting some of what I've learned. I can see not having access to some learned skills unless you're prepared -- for example, if you don't have flammable oil you can't shoot fire arrows; if you don't have special arrows you can't do rain of thorns.

But it doesn't make sense to me to wait until a lull in the combat and say "OK, now I know how to do rain of thorns for this next boss, but I can no longer afford to know how to set a bear trap." Customization is good, but it should be persistent.

Again, my personal opinion: You (and I) are no longer the targeted demographic. Turbine management want lots and lots of poor and mediocre players, for whom large skill sets are intimidating. The developers no longer have the ability or inclination to appeal to players of varied skill, certainly not the few exceptional ones. You will get vanilla and you will like it...or leave. Besides, many of the exceptional players will stay and buy the expansions just to see how the story plays out or role play or whatever. (I very probably fall into this category, even though I hate it.) Contrary to what the people on these boards often think, the managers at Turbine are not stupid. They are ruthless.

I like you. Sadly you are right

A quote we hear a lot, especially if you are in Forlaw lol

... "It's a sad thing to watch your lands die"

Founding Member of the Vocal Minority....

"Well my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Maybe that will be one of the outcomes for it, but that's not the primary reason. The current system is quite broken and doesn't scale well. For the long term health of LOTRO it either needed to be rewritten or Turbine has to keep applying band-aids regularly. I'm glad they finally decided on the former. To be honest it was way overdue.

This!

I am glad that this is being addressed. I hated the yo-yoing of skills as they tried to balance things (landscape, instance, raid, and pvp). Hunters for example would be like nuclear bombs for a couple weeks, then like little kittens for a couple more, and so forth until things got all balanced. Legendary skills like BotR are pointless above 60...

If some of you grizzled vets who know everything about the game inside and out leave, so be it.

Down with those who played LotRO seriously for the last 5 years! It's our game now, no matter how much you've invested into it!

Bubuthisisnotmadness (sp?) that IS what I'm saying. Then Tyviel hit the head of the nail (pardon the cliche) "So it's not really limiting you to picking just a single way to play, it's just limiting you from doing everything all at once." You get to be a one sided class that does one thing. Replace everything with multiple (unless you're a Warden ;P) Some of us enjoy thinking about all those things at the same time.

I hope you guys read other threads concerning this issue, or I'm just going to have to collect all that I've written about this subject, organize it into a super-reply, and just use it to Nuke every "I love simplification of classes!" Thread

That being said, there is an Issue with scaling of skills and new skills. Skill Trees do (because everything will be brand new right off the bat) address that issue. But it also screws over the grizzled vets. Is there no middle ground to solve these issues without tossing the baby out with the water?

I'd be very surprised if this happened. Stat tomes don't offer anywhere near the same kind of buff that our skills and traits do. While the Crystals of Remembrance do let us pick another Major Legacy, they don't give us more points to spend, so we need to spread our points more thinly. If Turbine began selling trait points it could unbalance the game, especially considering it is likely we will only get 5 new points per expansion (if the point every level, according to a dev chat, holds true).

Besides, Turbine can make money from this by selling spec slots, which many will undoubtedly buy. I'd certainly want a few extra.

I personally feel that the excuses of 'making the classes easier from the beginning' and 'reducing homogenization of classes' are a load of manure.
Forcing characters down a tree structure and limiting skills to specific trees make classes MORE homogenous because every player is going to be forced into cookie cutter builds.

The real reason IMO is that it makes content design easier because there are LESS configurations for each class due to the limitations imposed by a tree based skill system.

I don't think it's a good idea for Turbine to go this route. I can foresee a situation where, even if they wanted to lessen the workload in doing this, in order to keep the game active and engaging, they ended up setting a different target for players: in a broad sense, Themselves (their formula), rather than the monsters in the world. (which may increase the tasks they have to do, as these things may need regular adjustments.)
You'd then find yourself battling against a set target, with swiftly obvious standards - and that's supposed to DEcrease homogenisation, how, exactly? I kind of wish we had absolutes to get some impression of the reality of these changes. If they had just said "we have this thing we're doing, here's where we're going with it - what do you think?"

Instead, the majority of players reading those diaries get left playing second-guess, and there's a murk left in comments threads about the game for other potential players to read, and interpret.

I believe the reason behind the trait tree system is to force you to choose a role before entering combat. Right now, wardens, minis, guardians, and champs can all push a button and completely change their role instantly. For example, on my warden I can start in recklessness then if I get overwhelmed or an elite shows up, I push determination and go from dps to tank and walk away with full health. If a hunter gets in the same situation its time to either stun or run, and usually run is the better choice. I believe this creates a horrible imbalance between classes when doing at least landscape stuff. On my warden I can even change from tank to dps to tank to dps at will through out a fight. Frankly, its a balancing nightmare for the devs I am sure. The only issue I have is that I feel its better to boost the weak than to nerf the strong. I just hope this isn't an NGE kind of change.

Welleg , Kelleg, and Gelleg - Crickhollow
WARNING: leveling a warden may cause you to neglect your other characters.

I believe the reason behind the trait tree system is to force you to choose a role before entering combat. Right now, wardens, minis, guardians, and champs can all push a button and completely change their role instantly. For example, on my warden I can start in recklessness then if I get overwhelmed or an elite shows up, I push determination and go from dps to tank and walk away with full health. If a hunter gets in the same situation its time to either stun or run, and usually run is the better choice. I believe this creates a horrible imbalance between classes when doing at least landscape stuff. On my warden I can even change from tank to dps to tank to dps at will through out a fight. Frankly, its a balancing nightmare for the devs I am sure. The only issue I have is that I feel its better to boost the weak than to nerf the strong. I just hope this isn't an NGE kind of change.

the way the trait system works now, changing your stance midcombat allows you to choose a new role, true, but you will be sub-par doing so. That usually only is the last straw, when someone else in your group fails (like the tank dies, the champ goes to glory and tries to hold agro and stay alive til the guard/warden is rezzed). Since at the moment you cannot change your traits to the more suitable blue line (talking from a champ POV), you will be quite bad at it.. I find that a nice way to be flexible despite being specced for another role. Since you cannot really change your specialization without visiting a bard, i think this works rather well at the moment..

edit: besides, Landscape mobs shouldn't be really a problem, since all classes are overpowered anyways (for pve), the focus of balancing should be grouped content, allowing every class and player to provide equally to the success or failure of a raid.

. That usually only is the last straw, when someone else in your group fails (like the tank dies, the champ goes to glory and tries to hold agro and stay alive til the guard/warden is rezzed).

...or when you realize you've chased a creep too far away from your group in the moors and need to get back in healing range without going down.

There have been many times where I've changed to glory mid PvE raid though.. for your exact reason. Being red traited with DPS gear in glory only lets you live slightly longer than you would in Fevour, but if your survival and healing CD's are clear and you pop them smartly, it just might be enough to keep aggro off of the healers and squishies long enough for your tank to be rezzed. And that can make the difference between a wipe and a close call.

I hope this abillity is still possible. In 6 man runs with only 1 tank, having this option has always been a good champ bounus and has gotten groups through many "### warden? what happened?!" moments.

For you people that stated money as the prime reason for this I agree. But I think its a basic (we can't charge them for an expansion if we don't have change). They'd only be able to charge questpak mone if they didn't force a change on everyone. and they'd be right ! noone would want to pay $50 for content that should only cost $20.

Remember Mounted Combat? that was the last big change... it was suppose to revolutionize the way combat was to take place...It was and is still a nightmare with very little content to use it on. Will skill trees be any better? Will they work at all? Will the population run away from skill trees as fast as MC has died?

I've spent 7 years with skills and traits, which, to my understanding, have been working quite OK. Trait system was something quite original and deep. Now the move to skill trees seem like a strange choice. Skill trees (at least for me personally) seem to be something of an outdated design solution. They also push towards narrow specialisation (which also doesn't look good to me).

Maybe I could get an answer based on the opinion, post or explanation by the development team member(s), why this had to be changed? It would be important to understand the direction the game is taking (changing how all classes and their skills work is actually a huge thing, all people should realise that), especially with the preorder at hand.

Thank you for your time in advance!

Monetization of the character trait systems is one of, if not the biggest, reasons for this change. It clearly follows a patern of the core system revamps since F2P inception. We have not had a core "redesign" that didn't feature heavily into Turbines ability to monetize said system in their store. Have been several such "changes" that made little other sense to work on outside of this fact.

Take form that what you will. Not complaining, not judging, just stating a fairly clear observation and opinion based on prior behavior.